


you are my moonlight (my palest moonlight)

by oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Game, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hemospectrum, Hurt/Comfort, Mutilation, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, hemocaste flip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 16:02:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11763399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: One way in which Equius could have lost his horn, in some part of the multiverse.





	you are my moonlight (my palest moonlight)

**Author's Note:**

> _oh please, don't take my diamond away_

"It's only for two nights," you tell your moirail over the scarred wood of your mutual nutritional slab and he nods at you slow and steady. Your breath catches a little in your throat, just looking at him as he pulls his eye-protective shields off his face for a moment, rubbing the soft skin of his wrist over his tired, so tired eyes. You've both been working so hard, skimping and saving, trying to make sure the fact that you lost your steady job because the bottom had dropped out of the dye fancier business and seen you fired to cut costs, doesn't mean you both get thrown onto the streets, and you know he worries. Sometimes you wish you were just a little _higher_ , a little more _warm_ , so that he didn't need to look like this all the time. "Just a little hunting job! You'll barely know I'm gone," you say with false cheer, and grin at him.

The corner of his mouth twitches in something like a returning smile, and you try to ignore the fact that he left the larger piece of bread for you while you both eat vegetable stew. You're hoping that you can bring home something more filling than this kind of thing, even if he will barely eat it. At least it means there'll be more vegetables for him, if you're filling up on meat. You worry. He doesn't eat enough for the size he is, and when the cold part of the cycle rolls around, he's going to need to eat something substantial to keep himself going. At least you have furs. Still. Mostly. They're still good, you don't both need new coats yet.

"I always know when you're away from me." He reaches out to cover your hand briefly, cupping yours under his, scarred knuckles on display. He's got a new burn to the inside of his wrist. "But Heksti has always paid you before, and paid well. It will be fine. I will merely work on my projects. I have a new commission..."

"Really?!" you squeak, and grab his hand harder, lacing your fingers together. He's cool against you, and it's so soothing. You bring his hand up to your face and rub your cheek all over it, ignoring his choked sounds. "That's exciting! And mew'll see, I'll have propurr job in no time, and we'll move somewhere nicer! Somewhere better." You sigh, thinking about the rental hive you'd both had to give up a few perigees back when you'd lost your job. Without that steady stream of caegars, you'd sat down and looked at your budget together and gone hmm hmm hmm. And then found somewhere cheaper. The new tenants had been waiting to move in before Equius even finished loading the handcart you'd borrowed, and you know you miss the bigger rooms and the way it didn't smell like mould, and you know that he would never say anything about the purrfect way he'd had his workspace set up and how there'd been proper room for his little forge, but. But, you know. "...we'll be alright."

"It's only a storm," he says in his quiet deep voice. You love it, the way he speaks so carefully. He touches you just the same in your piles - things had been tumultuous when you were wigglers, still figuring everything out, but as long as you have him and he has you, you know it will all work out alright. "Things will be better again." He pets your cheek carefully before you let go of his hand, and then you both turn your attention back to your dinner.

This is a good sign, you tell yourself. You prefer jobs that keep you close, but maybe things aren't so bad around here, in this neighbourhood. You'd moved into a colder area, maybe that meant that people would accept your moirallegiance better? Accept him, at least? He's so clever. You know he's _so_ clever and good with his hands and he _thinks_ these things that are just - and if he ever, if he really _really_ got a chance - he could do great things. Amazing things. He could build stuff that would make other trolls' oculars pop right out of their furreaking faces. If things were the way they had been before the Summoner - a hundred sweeps ago or more - you wonder if he would have had time for _you_. Just a silly little midblood who pretended to be a meowbeast sometimes because things were simpler for meowbeasts, and he would have been almost noble. Maybe he wouldn't have. You want to think he would have.

The hunting trip is uneventful. You do excellently, like you always have and the older oliveblood is so pleased that he gives you extra on top of your pay. Well, he lets you take some of the smaller prey home in a bag even though he doesn't give you more than the the fifty caegars he carefully counted out into your palm, and your mouth is _watering_ , even though being out on the plains means that you've had two whole nights of eating on someone else's copper shard. You hope Equius has been eating properly, sometimes he forgets. Gets so wrapped up in circuitry that he forgets that he's not really circuits himself. You take care of him, but he takes care of you just as much. He's got a head for figures that you don't and a way of _looming_ suddenly that you know has brought down items at the market to something affordable more than once. Not that Equius is a threat. He's the furtherest thing from a threat - well, now, you can't purrtend that he doesn't have a temper but he hasn't done anything terrible for a very long time.

A long time, you repeat to yourself and don't think about _that_.

You swing your bag and look up at the moons and consider how nice it will be to sleep somewhere that smells like you and Equius muddled up together. You'd liked the calm coolness of the plains, the sweet scent of grass under your feet, and you'd taken one of his shirts with you but it wasn't the same. Stretching your arms, you pick up the pace a little as you walk into the kind of shitty (you've got to be pawnest with yourself, it's actually real shitty, just a step up from slumming it in fin-territory) collection of communal paths and hives that surround your rental hive. 

It's quiet.

Too quiet.

The back of your neck prickles, and you can feel that eyes are watching you. Shuddering a little in sudden anxiety and a slow wash of adrenaline, you make sure not to run. Not to show fear, you don't know who's watching. Someone's watching you, and it's not friendly. You head to your small hive, patched and rough as it is, wanting to get inside and off the street, suddenly feeling too warm to be standing outside. You want your moirail, all of a sudden. You're a furocious huntress, the very best there is, but suddenly you just want him real bad.

You go to unlock the door and the handle falls off it to land at your feet. You stare at it dumbly for a moment. What. What was going on, had Equius done that? Maybe he just gripped it too hard (you deliberately don't think about how if he'd done that and known about it, he would have fixed it right away).

"Equius?" You push the door open gently, and step over the lintel. "Equuuuius?" It's quiet. It's so quiet. You can't hear the bellows going, or the drill, or anything, anything at all. You can't hear anything. You creep into your own hive like something is going to leap out and attack you, breathing slow and careful through your mouth as you try to catch the scent of anything. With a shrug, your claws leap out from the hidden sheathes wrapped around your forearms, and you feel better for it even though if someone is waiting for you with riflekind or something, you're still pailed sixways to Sufferer's Day. "Sweatquius?" you whisper, trying to listen for your moirail, any sign at all.

The table in the nutritionalblock is overturned. You skirt broken pottery carefully, feeling like you can hear your pusher roaring in the back of your head. Everything's quiet. You pad through the hive, but you don't hear anything. There's nobody in the hive at all. You pause, trying to think and trying to work things out while your insides are jumping up and down inside you, while everything in you is a whisker's width from FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. Your moirail isn't in the hive. You can't find him. Something's happened. Someone's taken him. You want him, you _want him right now where's your moirail you want EQUIUS where have they taken him, where is he, WHERE IS HE -_

Out of the corner of your eye you catch cobalt blood splatter on frame of the outside door, the one that leads to your postage stamp sized piece of backyard. Where Equius has his really loud and smokey things. It's really the only reason you rented this place; that, and the way the goldblood who was renting it to you so obviously didn't care about shit as long as it didn't affect his profits by renting the hovel to _sometroll_. You push open the door carefully with your foot, staying pressed against the wall and not venturing into the open space. You wait a beat, listening with your ears, your skin, your everything. You hear nothing, just the usual sounds of the hives around you and the street traffic. Sneaking out from behind the door, you keep low and keep quiet. No one shoots at you, it's almost surprising, you were defurinately expecting someone to shoot at you.

is he

You look around, eyes skittering from heap of robot parts to forge to heap of scrap metal, where is he there's not actually that much to this patch of shitty dirt - _wait_. Did something there move? You bound over to it and start digging, because you can smell blood now. And sweat. And it's him, it's him, you've found him oh fuck, what have they _done_ to him?

"Equius!" 

You dig him out, and he's still breathing. You are so hideously grateful that he's still breathing that it hurts you. His chest heaves like his bellows, and his breathing sounds wet and raspy. You don't know what to do to - you don't know - he's the _practical_ one - what do you _do?_ Your hands hover above him, afraid to touch him and hurt him more, how did anyone even get a drop on him? He's big, he's so strong - oh fuck, he looks so broken - what are you - you don't know - what do you do now, what do you do now that you've found him? There's a thin desperate noise escaping from between your fangs as you try to take in the damage, the bruises and cuts, his shirt is burned half off his body and there's - you could put your fingers in the hole - and - and -

 _His horn_.

Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, his horn oh fuck, what do you do now? Your hands hover above his head, you don't even know where his shades are and, and, and. Your thoughts keep skipping, you can't look away. It's broken, right across the middle, he's lost like half of his fucking horn, they've mutilated him. He's maimed, how could they do something like that. His horn. That's beyond anything. That's. Did they hate him that much, hate you that much? What have either of you ever fucking done to deserve this? What could _he_ have done to deserve this? His horn, oh Summoner's tits, what are you going to _do_. He's bleeding. You need to. You've got to.

You touch his cheek, soft as you can. Every inch of him looks bruised. You're going to fix this. Somehow. He's fixed you before, you just need to. You'll think of something. What else are you going to do, he's your moirail, it's not like you can leave him to what. Die? No. But you don't know if you can lift him, or even if you should. You so don't like the sound of the way he's breathing, they must have broken a rib. When they shot him with a fucking plasma shooter or something, that's what that burn mark has to be.

They hadn't even ransacked your hive, as far as you could tell everything was still _fucking there_ , so what had they done this for? All of this? _Why?_

While you're staring at him with your thoughts doing panicked somersaults through your thinkpan, his eyes open blearily. 

"Equius?"

Your voice is soft and small, and you are so afraid. What if the hits did something to his pan, what if he's not your brilliant, dour moirail anymore? What if something's changed? His long lashes blink slowly, and he sighs as a tension in his muscles seems to go out of them. 

"...'ta..."

You sob, and press your fists up against your mouth. You're going to kill someone for this. You're going to kill someone. Your moirail should never look this weak, sound so small. You're going to kill them, you're going to - you're - His hand twitches, and you press it back down before he tries to exert himself and pap you. Look at him, still trying to take care of you even right now, with him being so fucking. So fucking...broken. You feel like someone could cut you and you'd bleed pale right now, just moonlight streaming through your veins not blood.

"Equius," you say, and take a deep breath. You don't have the luxury of panicking and vomiting, even though every breath makes you feel like the sour acid riding the back of your tongue is going to come straight up. "You're going to have to help me. I can't - I can't carry you by myself." You need to get him inside. It's a blessing in disguise that he was under the pile of parts, no matter what damage they did. At least you're not going to have to deal with sunburn, on top of everything else. The thought of the blisters that could have been covering your coldblooded moirail's hide after a day in the sun - you swallow hard. "Come on, Sweatquius, I know it hurts, you gotta - _please_ \- Equius, please, you have to stand up -"

You get him onto his feet with his arm around your shoulders as he leans on you like he's going to fall over in a hot second and you're going to have to throw these clothes away, they're going to smell like blood and sweat and burning flesh forever. Even if you could get the blood out, how could you wear them again? You'll sell them. Donate them to the fucking Sufferist charity, you don't care - something. You can't keep them (you're covered in your moirail's blood, _you're covered in his blue blue blood_ ). 

It's a good thing you're used to hauling big beasts around, because fuck, he's heavy. You get him inside and - you want to say safe, but it's not, it's not any more. They came into your hive, and they _hurt_ your _moirail_ , and there are only a few ways you can think that would happen. They surprised him, maybe. Lied to him, said they had work. Or they were higher, and warmer, and he just. You don't fucking know, but sometimes he can get _real fucking dumb_ over hierarchy shit. You'd had to work so hard to get him to see you as a troll, just a troll. Sometimes it still pops up in your feelings jam, he'll just go quiet and say something like 'of course, Nepeta, whatever you say'. The first time he'd really argued with you, stood his ground - well, heck, you'd been pissed but you'd been so proud too.

Who would do something like this?

You get him inside, and to the pile before letting him collapse down into it like a great tree coming down to rest. You manage to keep it to a slow fall, rolling him onto his back as he continues to wheeze, these shallow hurting breaths that make you want to howl. You keep it together. You keep yourself together. He needs you to be strong. 

Your hands shake, but you patch him up with the _fucking inadequate_ supplies you have. Like flipping shit you've got the caegars for a proper doctor, even with what you just bought in. You're going to need that money to keep you both fed until he's recovered, and you dare leave him on his own again. How had someone done this to him? You shoosh him and pap him and smear sopor in careful arcs across his face and down the sides of neck before sitting back to watch him sleep. You'll have to ask him what happened later, and make sure that he doesn't squirm out of it. If they were warmbloods, warmer than you, then you. You don't know what you're going to do. How you're going to avenge your moirail.

This fact of how weak you are, how fucking _vulnerable_ you both are hits you straight to your fucking bones and you hiss out a long controlled sound of rage from between your fangs. Get Equius better. Get a new job. Move somewhere where you never, never have to worry about something like this happening again. You'd known the neighbourhood was rough, that was why you could afford the rent - you hadn't known it was this rough. You curl up next to him in the pile once you've patched him up and he's sleeping uneasily, and you purr and purr, like it'll take the place of actual painkillers. You don't know what you're going to do, you just know that you both need to get out. You both deserve better than this.

When you're cleaning up the next evening, once you've gotten him to eat something and soothed him back to sleep, you find the half of his horn in the pile of parts. While on the one frond, you're glad no one took it as some kind of fucking trophy, on the other -

On the other frond, you throw up the little bit of breakfast you had about an hour ago, before finding somewhere to bury it.

It's not like you could graft it back on. You don't mention it to Equius, you just shovel it away under the dirt. His breathing makes you anxious, you know he's broken a few thoracic struts. You hope he hasn't punctured an aeration sack. You're not a doctorturer - like you'd fucking know! All you can do is keep him calm and quiet, and try not to lose your fucking shit and start a revenge cycle of some kind. What good would that be, when you don't even know who did it?

You just want him to be well. You want both of you to be safe. You watch him sleep with sopor smeared in drying patches on his cheeks and wake him up to make him drink water and some broth. If he wasn't so strong, you think he would have died. In the quiet hours of the day, the thought keeps you awake.

What would you do without him?

You don't even want to know. Won't happen, can't happen. He's going to get well, he'll recover, and. And you'll find somewhere nice to live, and he'll make his machines and it'll be somewhere that you can hunt too. It'll be perfect. You brush his hair away from his damp face as his chest rises and falls, and you listen to his lungs whistle, stutter as he sleeps, and wait. This is never going to happen to him again. And you're not going to have him have to sit through this either, not efur. Things are going to get better. You'll make sure they are.

Very, very carefully, you make sure not to go anywhere near the broken horn as you brush your fingers through his hair, over and over again while you stare at your shutters while you wait for the moons to come up and listen to him breathe.


End file.
